Homebuyer Tax Credit Helped Home Sales -- Really!

Yesterday a provocative headline about the housing market appeared online: "Many March, April Pending Home Sales May Never Close."

That's terrible news, or is it?

The trouble is that the economist quoted in the story is wrong. He makes a basic, quite understandable goof about the date of a deadline and then appears to base his entire dire prediction on that mistake.

The interesting thing about this story is that it may show how the bias among economists and journalists has shifted: It's now relatively easy to get published if you say something depressing about housing, even if you're wrong.

What is the reason for this bias?